There have conventionally been known many printers, and among which are printers wherein a print or a display process is executed using preinstalled data of characters, images or templates for layouts, etc. and in addition to these printers there are printers wherein a user can freely store data of characters, images or templates for layouts and a print or a display process is executed using the freely-stored data. In some printers, the data set freely by the user can be created at the printer, and in other printers, the data can be transmitted from a personal computer.
In a conventional printer, each piece of data transmitted from the personal computer is controlled as a file for each piece of data. From the personal computer, a file can be transmitted to plural printers; however, the file is not necessarily compatible to all the plural printers. Many files are of a kind compatible to a specific printer or a specific model of a printer. Accordingly, there is a case in which files are controlled in the personal computer so as to be sorted into different folders according to corresponding printers or models of printers and then stored, so that a user can be spared troubles of operation to determine whether to transmit a file to a certain printer or not when transmitting the file. Alternatively, there is also a case in which printer information is added to each of the files, instead of sorting the files into different folders.
In case files are each sorted into and stored in each of the corresponding folders, in an example of conventional transmission software that transmits files from a personal computer to plural printers, files of a template for a layout or of external character data are stored in different folders in the personal computer according to the predetermined classification, and in the personal computer in which the transmission software is activated, first of all, a user is asked to designate a folder, namely, a classification of a file transmission source, using a predetermined window. Then, the user is asked to designate a file to be transmitted using another window, transmission is set to the file, and the file to which transmission is set is transmitted to a printer.
However, in the above conventional transmission software, even if the transmission software is activated in a personal computer, a file cannot be transmitted from the personal computer to a printer unless many manual operations are conducted by a user.